He released her suddenly. Her words broke the spell. The vulgar accent gave him a shudder.
"Don't you _hear_ a bell ringing?" he said with dual significance.
"Nosir," said Mary Ann, ingenuously. "I'd yer it in a moment if there was. I yer it in my dreams, I'm so used to it. One night I dreamt the missus was boxin' my yers and askin' me if I was deaf and I said to 'er--"
"Can't you say 'her'?" cried Lancelot, cutting her short impatiently.
"Missus told me to. She said my own way was all wrong."
"Oh, indeed!" said Lancelot. "It's missus that has corrupted you, is it? And pray what used you to say?"
Lancelot was taken aback. "She!" he repeated.
"Yessir," said Mary Ann, with a dawning suspicion that her own vocabulary was going to be vindicated; "whenever I said 'she' she made me say ''er,' and whenever I said 'her' she made me say 'she.' When I said 'her and me' she made me say 'me and she,' and when I said 'I got it from she,' she made me say 'I got it from ''er.'"
"Bravo! A very lucid exposition," said Lancelot, laughing. "Did she set you right in any other particulars?"
"Eessir--I mean yessir," replied Mary Ann, the forbidden words flying to her lips like prisoned skylarks suddenly set free. "I used to say, 'Gie I thek there broom, oo't?' 'Arten thee goin' to?' 'Her did say to I.' 'I be goin' on to bed.' 'Look at--'"
"Enough! Enough! What a memory you've got! Now I understand. You're a country girl."
"Eessir," said Mary Ann, her face lighting up. "I mean yessir."
"Well, that redeems you a little," thought Lancelot, with his whimsical look. "So it's missus, is it, who's taught you Cockneyese? My instinct was not so unsound, after all. I dare say you'll turn out something nobler than a Cockney drudge." He finished aloud, "I hope you went a-milking."
"Eessir, sometimes; and I drove back the milk-trunk in the cart, and I rode down on a pony to the second pasture to count the sheep and the heifers."
"Eessir. But my feyther--I mean my father--had only two little fields when he was alive, but we had a nice garden, with plum trees, and rose bushes, and gillyflowers--"
"Better and better," murmured Lancelot, smiling. And, indeed, the image of Mary Ann skimming the meads on a pony in the sunshine, was more pleasant to contemplate than that of Mary Ann whitening the wintry steps. "What a complexion you must have had to start with!" he cried aloud, surveying the not unenviable remains of it. "Well, and what else did you do?"